Ever the advocate for women's health and the pursuit of advancing women's issues in medical science, I was reading Self Magazine's article bought today while flipping through the stacks of magazines to buy while contemplating what to make for dinner (okay I digress......) in regards to the journey of several women plagued with cancer and the expensive drugs out there being sold to save their lives.
Some women forgo extending their lives a few months (usually done in hope a cure is found or a better drug to prolong their existance) because they cannot afford the treatments.
Usually there is some kind of co-pay that a patient has to fork over, sometimes insurance will not cover certain treatments (so it behooves you all to take a closer look at your insurance policies).....I know I will. I have included some information regarding this article. Okay, okay I am all for capitalism and generating that all too precious bottom dollar but when is enough...well....enough? Place yourself in these women's shoes...or if you are a woman, place yourself in their sickness....would you rather forgo the medicine because you simply cannot afford it would you like to find a way some way to tell these companies to quit pirating their wares to the needy and drop their prices on these drugs.
I used to work at Pfizer while an intern in college and I understand the costs of research and development and keeping the product sterile....to a point about making a profit (after that it is a free for all and I think profits are way inflated)....while the industry makes billions in profits each year, wonderful women and mothers to boot are loosing their battle with cancer because the simply cannot afford the cost of saving their own life. The health industry is booming and at the price of people's lives. Again, I understand making a profit but when (like the oil industry) does profit become abject greed??????????????????
How much is a life worth?
Revolutionary new cancer drugs offer hope where there was none. But the price tag may be too high for some to bear.
By Roxanne Patel Shepelavy
From the October 2007 issue (page 1 of 4)
Michelle Diekmeyer lay awake in the dark, trying not to panic. It was a struggle she seemed to be losing more and more every sleepless night in July 2005. Seven months after being diagnosed with stage IIIB inflammatory breast cancer, 37-year-old Diekmeyer had spent nearly 100 days in doctors' offices or the hospital near her Ohio home. She'd had five surgeries, with another scheduled for September; slogged through more than three months of grisly chemotherapy; suffered the indignities of baldness and violent nausea. After all that, she still didn't know if she'd survive the year. But Diekmeyer had another, more immediate, fear keeping her up nights. Because of mounting medical bills, she was worried she might lose her home.
Already, Diekmeyer owed her oncologist more than $10,000, debt that had escalated since May 2005, when she started taking Herceptin, a cutting-edge cancer formula. Produced by Genentech, a leading manufacturer of biotech drugs in South San Francisco, California, the new medicine was her best—perhaps her only—hope of beating the disease. It was hope that came with a steep price: Every three weeks after her IV infusion of Herceptin, her insurance company paid her doctor 70 percent of the cost of treatment. The rest—about $1,500—was supposed to come from Diekmeyer. But she and her husband, Randall, a networking manager for an architectural engineering firm, had already depleted their modest savings on her medical bills; they'd cut out even small luxuries, like the daily newspaper. Diekmeyer was too sick to go back to her job as a church secretary. And she faced 10 more months of Herceptin and an unknown future of other treatments. Still, Diekmeyer had no choice. She either took the Herceptin or faced an almost certain death.
"How do I put a price on my life?" Diekmeyer wondered, not for the last time. "I can't. I just hope my doctors are patient about my bills. There's nothing else I can do."
Bristol-Myers Squibb faced congressional hearings over plans to charge up to $6,000 for a six-month treatment of Taxol, then a groundbreaking ovarian cancer drug. Now new biotech cancer drugs routinely cost $25,000 to $50,000 a year, with some running close to $100,000. The cost of cancer-fighting drugs went up 27 percent in 2006, compared with less than 2 percent for other drugs, according to the most recent Medco Drug Trend Report. And many of the new medications are being tested in combination, so patients may be faced with not one but two or even three drugs that cost $50,000 each. That's the case with ImClone's Erbitux and Genentech's Avastin, two of the priciest commonly used cancer drugs on the market, which are being tested together for colorectal cancer.
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